


Things always there, waiting to be sounded

by twofrontteethstillcrooked



Series: A certain knot of peace [4]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Feels, Canon Era, M/M, Tiptoeing toward silverflinthamilton, Treasure Island who?, snippetfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-19
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-21 04:03:29
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,182
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13732752
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twofrontteethstillcrooked/pseuds/twofrontteethstillcrooked
Summary: Thomas grabbed Flint's hand. "I know they were saying his--""It's only a name." Flint pulled back his hand, felt himself curling around the thought of that moment, truly, those minutes, mere minutes, in Plymouth."Only a name or not, sometimes I think the less we say it, the more we imbue it with powers it ought not to have.""He is a story now," Flint replied, "nothing more."He had been so careful, for so many months, not to think about Silver.





	Things always there, waiting to be sounded

**Author's Note:**

> Set before [A certain knot of peace](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12667041), because I'm apparently incapable of writing things in any sort of coherent order.

It was a year or longer before Silver came back to him in the forest. 

An irony, Flint thought, that you left and I stayed. He had waited with more than usual forbearance, had sat in the green air as vines strained to coil around him and tree branches fractured the high sun into emeralds. Silver, in his blue coat, said nothing. His arm, extended, shook slightly with the weight of the pistol. 

The anger inside Flint roiled; when he spoke the flaying words there was nowhere for them to exist, no dry space between the storm churning above and the dark water expanding below. He could not draw a breath. When he finished, the air brightened, like an eastern curtain had been opened at dawn. The blood slicking Silver's shirt glistened dark red, almost black. In his hand his heart was gore and gift; he had pried it from his own chest with his fingertips; he held it out, a sacrifice, a sacrament. His eyes were wet. The anguish on his face was a knife in Flint's hand. 

I miss you more than I imagined possible, Flint thought.

He woke with Thomas's arm around him. Thomas made shushing sounds and Flint realized he himself was making the keening noise he heard in the tiny cold room. 

"Please, James," Thomas whispered. "Can we go to him now?"

~

They sat by the little hearth, on the sopha with the moth-eaten upholstery. Thomas stirred embers and Flint gripped a cup in his hands as if to leech the last warmth from the old tea. The room was theirs for another week, if they wanted it. The landlady had liked the look of Thomas so well she'd tactfully ignored their fibs about being cousins. 

On the mantle were two letters, inked in Madi's elegant hand on corse paper. Flint had read them each once and left them there; it would take only an open window on a blustery day to make it as though she had never sent them at all.

He should not have written her. But then, he had not really expected the letter to reach her, nor for her to write back -- subsequently, hadn't expected to learn of Silver living in gnarled treacherous England, alone for a time, or to be in bitter gray fucking England himself. Had not expected to make it out of the colonies alive, nor to be alive. 

Thomas, breathing, with a blanket over his lap and his leg resting against Flint's. Unexpected. Which was to say, miraculous.

"You are allowed to keep your own council," Thomas said. "In part because you are much more transparent than you think." 

Flint put his cup on the floor. 

Thomas continued, "And perhaps it has been my hesitation that has led us to another early morning, or late night, even, where neither of us seems to be managing much rest." He paused, and forged ahead after Flint declined to say anything. "You are changed since Plymouth."

Flint looked at Thomas, smoothed a tuft of hair sticking out at his temple. "The inn we'd chosen was less than suitable."

Thomas grabbed Flint's hand. "I know they were saying his--"

"It's only a name." Flint pulled back his hand, felt himself curling around the thought of that moment, truly, those minutes, mere minutes, in Plymouth. 

"Only a name or not, sometimes I think the less we say it, the more we imbue it with powers it ought not to have." 

"He is a story now," Flint replied, "nothing more."

He had been so careful, for so many months, not to think about Silver.

Over the din in the Plymouth tavern the name had reached his ears, seemed to draw blood fast as nicking oneself shaving; he was out on the wet cobblestones and only distantly aware of Thomas rushing in behind him after throwing some coin at the barkeep. 

"And what of Captain Flint?" a sailor with rolled up sleeves yelled that sunny day, and though the question had not been directed at Flint himself, nor was there anything to indicate any of the gathered crowd recognized him as the captain of which they spoke, Flint's stomach heaved. 

"Drinking away his failures in the colonies, I hear," an extraordinarily tall man answered in a booming voice, "or else gone to Davy, and I know which I prefer!" The man threw back his head -- a shock of hair so blond in the sunlight it was nearly white, and his face ruddy as a burn -- and laughed as though he should laugh forever more. 

The crowd responded with its own laughter, loud as a flock of crows. 

"How many did you kill this time, Long John?" someone else called out. 

The blond man's grin was a predator's. He turned and Flint, jostled by another onlooker, saw suddenly a little bit of left leg that remained. Against a crude crutch the man swayed like some towering tree stripped bare of leaves and bark both. Flint was close to retching; he bit the inside of his jaw until he tasted iron. 

"As many as were needed killing, didn't old John?" The crowd groaned but the man's skeletal smile only widened, and the bragging, gleaming eyes challenged. 

"Show us the gold!" someone cajoled. 

The man reached into the pocket of his dirty leather coat and flicked a coin from his fingertips into the crowd. It was caught by a woman who gave a little shriek of happiness. Her skin was as dark as Madi's but she was younger, slighter; not looking from her benefactor she held herself coyly, with none of the regalness with which Madi usually stood. The girl's smile was a beacon, and the pirate crept toward it as if to introduce himself properly. 

"James?" Thomas had whispered. 

Flint began walking away, out through the crowd which paid him no heed, down the road toward the inn where they'd planned to stay the night. Remaining was no longer an option. Beside him Thomas kept brisk pace, confused and distressed into silence. 

"He is more than a story," Thomas said, unwilling in the present to stay quiet and therefore pulling Flint back into it. "Nothing happened in Plymouth, yet you have not slept a full night since."

"You know of him," Flint started, and almost choked to a stop. 

He felt the sun's relentless heat again, wind, the sword's heft, smelled the sea. Remembered Silver's smile, his eyes canting away. 

_You know of him all I can bear to be known_ were the words that had been going to come out of Flint's mouth. 

His mind formed an image of a child too thin; a whelp cowering, starving, snarling, bruised. Unloved. 

Thomas held Flint's hand between both of his. "He's in every story you've told me since we met again. He _is_ nearly every story you've told, save the ones about Miranda in Nassau--" Here Thomas's voice weakened a little. "--Or my father." 

"Thomas--"

"You've been trying to unpick the stitches of whatever thread you believe binds him to you, but James, you mistake the very nature of what he is to you."

Flint closed his eyes. He whispered, "And what is he to me?"

He felt heavy, frozen, as if an undercurrent threatened to tug him down into an opaque grave. How had he ever survived without Thomas, when he knew himself so little? 

He opened his eyes. The answer burst in Flint's chest like lead-shot: Miranda had known him, and then, fair or not, Silver had come to know him more fully than she or Thomas had. Silver had seen every wretched side of Flint, and had spared his life anyway. 

Flint saw his own realization cross onto Thomas's face.

"He's sinew, vein, flesh," Thomas said softly. "He's bone. You could pare him away, I have no doubt, if you wanted, and perhaps it would not kill you. After all, we know sometimes a limb must be separated and discarded to spare the whole."

Flint clamped his back teeth together, to break a cry before it could escape.

Thomas said, "We are free, you and I. We survived. I cannot compel you to a resolution you would not willingly undertake. I spent far too many years with men whose choices had been stolen, whose lives were stolen and squandered. We can never undo what is past -- not what we did, not what was done to us." He thumbed away the tear at the corner of Flint's eye. 

"He left us in chains," Flint said.

"He made a choice; it was not ideal, to say the least."

"No."

"Good thing I spent three years plotting out how to escape." Thomas wasn't bragging, though he deserved to be. "You chose many things. We speak of names: you chose to start a war in mine. I'm flattered, but I did not ask you to."

Flint shook his head at the flare of anger in Thomas's eyes, at how quickly it transformed to something less destructive yet more urgent than rage. 

"I was given a choice, in London," Thomas said, in a voice rough as sand, "and I chose to save you and I chose to save Miranda. I would make that choice again without hesitation. I would not ask you to apologize for a single action you undertook in my name, nor would I condemn a man who did exactly as I did, whatever his means." Thomas took a shaky breath. "You are here, with me. He is alive. _You are alive._ You know where he may be. Let that be another beginning." 

"This isn't why we came back. It isn't," Flint said, feeling caught out. He couldn't keep looking at Thomas. Instead he stared at the fading embers. 

Thomas let a long moment pass. "First, we can have more than one reason to have returned to England." His fingers were gentle, tucking a strand of hair behind Flint's ear. "Secondly: tell me you do not want this, then, and I will never mention it again," he said.

When Flint turned to him everything he saw in Thomas's eyes made him want to weep: with gratitude, with despair.

"What if he does not wish to see me?" Flint said, as though he could fill his lungs against the fear rising up in him at the thought of Silver denying him again.

Thomas kissed his temple, his cheek, his mouth. "James," he said, "he is waiting for you right now."

"How on earth could you know--"

"Because it's what I was doing." Thomas smiled. "Even when I thought I wasn't."

He stood, taking Flint's hand with him. He led Flint back to bed and wrapped him in their ratty quilt. Face to face they studied one another. Slowly, Flint felt lighter. The right corner of Thomas's mouth had turned up just that little bit in that familiar way, equal parts earnest, exasperating, and encouraging, as Miranda had always described it.

It was as if Thomas had bade Silver into Flint's mind: Flint let Thomas watch as he imagined what it might feel like, to see Silver. See him, touch him. How many days had it been since he had brushed past him or steadied him at his elbow, given him a cup of stale water, a book, a pen, a parchment, a sword? Seen him swear or smile? Heard him lie, or laugh, give an order, spin a story, tell a truth? Talked to him, listened to him. Been near enough to feel the heat from his body.

Admit this, Flint told himself. You know what you saw in his eyes more than once, however much he did not speak of it and you did not speak of it. Go to him, and you may be welcomed -- you should not now pretend otherwise -- to reach for him, to touch him with more purpose than before. May be allowed, one day, to learn the shallow between his shoulder blades, to trace his collarbone, the rim of his ear. Press your palms against his, encircle his wrists with your fingers. Taste the salt at the base of his throat. Raise your hands and tangle them in his hair; drown in him and be saved again and again.

Thomas pressed another kiss beside Flint's eye.

Flint felt the bed begin to solidify beneath them. He struggled to keep his voice even. "You will come with me?" 

"Always," Thomas said, ever sensible, ever dear. "We will find him together."

~ 

It fit, he thought, to have arrived at this place on a morning of heavy frost, with the grass crisp and silvered as dawn slowly leaked over the horizon. He thought of Thomas, bending to kiss him goodbye an hour earlier, his eyes sleepy and hopeful. From the doorstep Flint could hear someone moving about, preparing for the coming day, and the cadence of those steps was so familiar he thought his courage might falter right there. He considered what leaving would cost him; what he could not live without another day, much less forever. 

Flint raised his fist and knocked on the door. 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is borrowed (cough) from Carl Phillips's poem _Hymn_ :  
> ...When I think of desire / it is in the same way that I do / God: as parable, any steep / and blue water, things that are always / there, they only wait / to be sounded.
> 
> tldr i am still very bad at titles


End file.
